In my introduction, I referred to Norbert Lynton's comments on the origins of publicly funded art education in Britain. Lynton asserted that the state-funded art school was both the product of industrialization and a reaction to the loss of cultural cohesion with the advent of this new mode of production. Lynton hedges his bets by suggesting that industrialization ushers in changes, which in turn prompt a culturally conservative reaction against those changes, an ‘insurance policy against the end of civilization’. However, George Berkeley's proposal in The Querist for a political experiment in publicly funded art education was not a response to a change in modes of production. It was a political experiment that attempted to harness economic power to the promotion of public virtues. In this case, the art school begins with the promotion of the virtue of industry, not with a change in the mode of production brought in by industrialization; it is a political necessity with an economic dimension.